Optical networks employing 10 gigabit Ethernet (10 GE) transport Ethernet frames at a rate of 10 gigabits per second. A router in such an optical network typically includes multiple client interfaces, each of which uses a single optical carrier (e.g., light of a single wavelength) for receiving and/or transmitting data. Transport equipment connects to the router via multiple client interfaces, which each use the single optical carrier, to receive data transmitted from the client interfaces of the router. The transport equipment may further include multiple transport cards, each of which transmits outgoing data over a single optical carrier. The transport equipment sends the data via the single optical carriers to destination transport nodes in the optical network.